Lu and Jack have gone together to town. I’ve done maths with Delph and peeled and cooked up a big pile of potatoes. I just made a salsa for the potato salad: finely chopped sun-dried tomato, gherkins and shallots in olive oil. Now I’m waiting for Lu and Jack to come back – and feeling uneasy.

Why the feeling? I feel uneasy about feeling uneasy. After all, we have food. Went supermarket shopping yesterday afternoon. We don’t have any upcoming obligations to leave the boat. Delph is happy as anything, reading away in the front cabin. She’s found fan-fiction an engrossing genre and is off, reading it. The only thing is she’s a bit bruised. We’re not so used to the rocking life, and a couple of times she’s gotten up and smacked into things. Annoying things, doorways are.

We did yoga this morning with Patrice, so my muscles are stretched and warm. No, for me this is not a physical unease. I’m worried about Quest’s crew. I wonder if they are ok. When Lu gets mad you see, she tends to pick on her dad. He gets upset. People who get upset tend to be easy to pick on.

But she doesn’t mean it either. Not quite that. What I mean is the other night she did it to me too. Gets under my skin with a few choice phrases. The difference is that she keeps going until I explode. She’s instantly sorry then.

I also see her side though. I do. It’s like she doesn’t know where to put her energy – and she has buckets of energy. And try telling a teenager to go for a swim or a kayak ride. Try telling a teenager to do anything.

Boat life is like this. Emotions and weird decisions. For example, we are realising that we can’t run our second fridge and our water-maker as much as we want to. When the water-maker took a break from operation in Barbados due to its main case cracking, we turned our freezer on low – as a fridge. One operation turned into another, and no overall energy was lost.

Now the water-maker is back in operation, but the fridge is still going too. Using all this energy means our batteries, despite their generator top-up and usual solar charging, haven’t floated since we left the marina. In response, we can exchange a solar panel for a more efficient model, and this should help plug the gap. It’ll take about a month for the new panel to come.

In the meantime, we have to choose an appliance. The question is, do we want spare water or not to have to run to the shops for food? The second fridge allows us to do a week’s shop at a time. This is handy. When you get into a routine of school in the mornings and diving in the afternoons, it’s annoying being low on provisions. Showering though is handy too. Ahh, decisions.

Quest’s crew have just returned – and lo and behold they’re ok. No one is offended. Fantastic. I’m going for a swim. And there’s some chocolate in the fridge. I just won’t shower afterwards.